Hunger, private property rights, and the right to food

This paper questions whether the right to food as a minimum requirement for social and economic welfare, are fully compatible with freedom rights (on which property rights are based) and their implications on private markets. More specifically, it asks, how should private property rights be structured/regulated to accommodate the right to food set forward in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Article 11?

The paper argues the following points:

• the presence of endemic hunger, as well as the threat of local famines, may rely heavily on how private property rights are regulated, or not regulated through restrictions on global trade, and private food markets
• although local authorities are an inevitable determinant in the emergence and maintenance (or combat for that matter) of hunger, the channels of international markets, where property rights play a crucial part, may bring new insights to the problem of hunger if considered
• if the right to food is violated through structural adjustment programs implemented by the IMF and the World Bank, as was the case in Rwanda in 1990, there is clearly a conflict between private property rights and the right to food. In this context, that the IMF/World Bank austerity policies of the 1980s ensured that any little welfare arrangements previously enjoyed by vulnerable groups subjected to entitlement failures were largely removed
• these fiscal policies directly contributed to a higher risk of hunger